Japanese curry with homemade roux

Method

1. Make the roux first, because it wants your attention and nothing else can want it at the same time. Melt the butter in a small heavy saucepan over medium-low heat. Whisk in the flour and keep it moving for 15 to 20 minutes, until it goes from pale to the colour of peanut butter and smells like toasted biscuits. Lower the heat if it colours faster than that; a scorched roux is bitter and cannot be saved.
2. Take the pan off the heat. Stir in the curry powder, garam masala, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, cloves, fenugreek, cayenne, and salt. The residual heat is enough to bloom them. Stir for a minute, then scrape the roux into a bowl and set it aside. It will stiffen as it cools, which is fine.
3. Heat the oil in a wide heavy pot. Brown the chicken in two batches over high heat, seasoning with salt and pepper, and lift it out. You are after colour, not cooked through.
4. Turn the heat down to medium and add the onions with a pinch of salt. Cook 12 to 15 minutes, stirring, until they collapse and turn golden at the edges. This is where the sweetness of the finished curry comes from, so give it the time.
5. Add the garlic and ginger, stir for a minute, then return the chicken with any juices.
6. Pour in the stock. Add the grated apple, honey, soy sauce, ketchup, and Worcestershire. Bring to a simmer and skim off any foam.
7. Add the carrots and potatoes. Cover and simmer gently for 15 to 20 minutes, until the potatoes are just tender. Do not let it boil hard or the potatoes will break up and cloud the sauce.
8. Ladle about 200 ml of the hot broth into the bowl of roux and whisk until smooth, then pour that back into the pot and stir. Tempering it this way is the difference between a glossy sauce and lumps.
9. Simmer uncovered for 10 minutes, stirring often, until the sauce coats the back of a spoon and holds a line when you draw a finger through it. Taste and adjust the salt.
10. Let it stand off the heat for 10 minutes before serving over hot rice.

Notes

• What is actually in a curry block, and why to skip it. The published label for S&B Golden Curry reads: wheat flour, palm oil, salt, sugar, curry powder at 8.6 percent (turmeric, coriander, cumin, fenugreek, orange peel, spices), MSG, caramel colour, then a second bracket of spices (pepper, chilli, garlic, celery seed, mustard). S&B’s own vegetable retort curries name cinnamon and star anise in that second bracket. House Vermont Curry leads with palm oil and wheat flour, then adds honey, apple paste, banana paste, cocoa, and cheese powder, which is why it tastes so soft. So flour, fat, salt, and a small amount of spice, in that order. The warm notes you remember are real, but they sit at one or two percent of a blend that is itself under a tenth of the block. Making the roux yourself means the flour and fat are fresh, the salt is yours to set, and the cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, and clove are line items you can move. Double the cinnamon and nutmeg here and the curry still works. You cannot do that to a block.
• Tuning it. The quantities above are already about three times the warm spice of a commercial block. If you want it further forward, go to 5 g cinnamon and 2.5 g nutmeg, and add a 5 cm cinnamon stick and one star anise to the pot at step 6, fished out before serving. If it tips too far and starts tasting like Christmas, pull the clove back first: clove is the spice that pushes a curry into baking territory fastest.
• Japanese and Korean curry are the same lineage. Curry reached Japan through the British navy in the Meiji era, as British curry powder rather than anything from India, and S&B has sold its red tin since 1923. Korean curry came from Japan a few decades later. Ottogi’s Korean curry powder lists wheat flour, dextrin, and curry powder at 10.5 percent of turmeric, coriander, cumin, fenugreek, and fennel: the same construction, slightly lighter and yellower, less of the dark caramel note. If you want the Korean version of this dish, thin the sauce a little, skip the ketchup and Worcestershire, and cut the cooking time so the vegetables stay firmer.
• Shopping in Germany. S&B curry powder in the small red tin and S&B Golden Curry blocks are both stocked by most Asia-Märkte and by the German online Asia shops. If you cannot get Japanese curry powder, a mild supermarket Currypulver plus the garam masala is close enough, since the difference is mostly the orange peel and fenugreek. Garam masala is easy at any Indian or Turkish grocer. Ground fenugreek is Bockshornkleepulver, sold in Turkish shops and reform shops. Fukujinzuke, the red pickle served alongside, is worth buying if you see it; sharp pickled cucumber or Mixed Pickles does the same job of cutting the richness.
• Make ahead. The roux keeps a month in the fridge in a sealed jar and freezes indefinitely. Make a triple batch while you are already standing at the stove. The finished curry is better on the second day, so this is a good Saturday-for-Sunday dish.
• Failure modes. Roux browned too fast tastes burnt and no amount of stock will hide it. Roux added straight to the pot clumps; temper it. Boiling after the roux goes in can make the sauce grainy, so keep it at a slow simmer. And floury potatoes disintegrate; use festkochende.
• When you want the sauce on its own. This recipe commits the pot to chicken, potato, and carrot, which is what you want for dinner tonight but not what you want in the freezer, since potato goes grainy and watery once frozen. Make japanese-curry-sauce instead when the point is to build a batch: same scratch roux, no protein, cinnamon and nutmeg pushed further forward with a dial-it-in range, thicker on purpose, and portioned to freeze. One batch of that covers curry rice, katsu curry, and curry udon.
• Leftovers. Thin it with dashi and pour it over udon for curry udon. Or fry a chicken katsu, slice it, and lay it over rice with the curry beside it. Cold leftover curry also makes a good filling for a savoury pastry, sealed in puff pastry and baked at 200°C for 20 minutes.

Sources used

• Just One Cookbook: How to Make Japanese Curry Roux
• Just One Cookbook: Japanese Chicken Curry from Scratch
• Just One Cookbook: Japanese Curry Powder
• Just Hungry: The formula for making Japanese curry powder
• Waitrose: S&B Golden Curry Sauce Mix, ingredients label
• House Foods Group: Vermont Curry Mild, ingredients label
• Went Here 8 This: How to Make Japanese Curry Roux
• My Korean Kitchen: Korean Curry Powder